Caldwell Community College Writing Center Profile

By Veronica Nawojczyk, Sarah Luckadoo, and Adrienne Fouts

    Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute’s Writing Center offers its clients a highly individualized consultation experience thanks in large part to its unique location within a community college. Located on both the Watauga Campus (Student Services Center- Room 100) and the Caldwell Campus (F-153) of their institution, they offer students ample opportunity to obtain the benefits of a tutoring session (“The Writing Center”). Writing Center Coordinator, Laura Benton, manages the operations of the Caldwell Writing Center with Writing Center Assistant, Holly Freeman, and Writing Center Instructor, Martin Moore. Together, with their trained consultants, they ensure that the goals set in the Caldwell Writing Center’s mission statement are actualized for the benefit of their clients. This mission statement reads:

The Writing Center is designed to provide writers with the tools necessary to write and communicate effectively, thereby promoting success throughout college as well as in the workplace. The Writing Center offers a positive, individualized and collaborative learning environment with trained staff who are willing and able to assist writers one-to-one with all types, modes, and levels of writing at all stages of the writing process. (“The Writing Center”)

By breaking down this mission statement, we can better analyze the ways in which the Writing Center realizes their own goals in their day-to-day operations.

    Firstly, “the tools necessary” can be found within the resources offered both online and in the centers. Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute (CCCTI) connects students and the community with “Writer’s Resources” on their website www.cccti.edu/WritingCenter. Links to various writing handouts and handbooks stock the website. Additionally, printed copies of several thorough handouts can be found within the centers themselves. CCCTI’s Writing Center uses a plethora of wonderful handouts based off of student needs that have been observed in the past (Freeman). The creation of these handouts is a collaborative effort where “someone comes up with an idea for a new handout and puts it into action. Before a handout goes to be printed, [...] everyone checks not only for errors, but for usability and functionality (Freeman).” This peer review process allows multiple people to contribute their ideas to the handout, making it very strong by the time it is published. They also sell detailed handbooks such as “The Little Seagull Handbook” for around thirty dollars and “Keys for Writers” for around seventy dollars.

    One of the more unique resources offered are events called “Write Wise Wednesdays”. These are a series of hour-long topic workshops that the Writing Center offers on Wednesdays at noon (Moore). Some of the topics that they cover in these workshops include, but are not limited to: MLA/APA formatting, revision strategies, editing techniques, approaches to research, thesis development, aspects of grammar, resume and cover letter work, and many more (“The Writing Center”). The topics are decided based upon student needs from the previous semester (Freeman). The schedule of topics is released at the beginning of every semester so that students and instructors alike can plan ahead to attend the workshops best fitted to their needs.

    The “positive, individualized, and collaborative learning environment” that Caldwell’s Writing Center promises is enabled by their selection of friendly, polite consultants and by their uniquely small student population. Being a community college, Caldwell’s consultant to client ratio is higher than most Universities. This unique quality affords them a chance to work on a more personal level with every client. Freeman observes that in any session at Caldwell’s Writing Center:

You can expect to sit down and work one-to-one with an attentive, engaged, and trained consultant. We will first discuss the nature of the assignment before proceeding on to a conversation regarding your expectations for the session. We will then move on to your writing, responding to your text as a reader and asking you questions for you to consider as a writer. We will provide you with a positive learning environment - specially tailored to your unique needs and concerns as a writer - and the opportunity to actively engage with your writing. (Freeman)

Although the number of individuals seeking writing consultations is not as high as in most University settings, Moore insists that those that do seek help often return for additional consultations. Last year, Moore observed the numbers and noticed that merely 60 students made up around 375 consultations in the Watauga Campus Writing Center. The smaller population of the community college allows students to feel, as Moore put, “less like a number.” The numbers indicate that despite the smaller population, students certainly enjoy the individualized attention attained if they are indeed returning so often. 

    Within this smaller population of clients lies a key difference between Caldwell and major Universities: non-traditional students. As a community college, Caldwell encounters more non-traditional students than many big-name Universities (Moore). Many of the clients that Caldwell Writing Center consultants work with come from diverse backgrounds and are in different stages of their lives (Moore). Moore finds that he learns a great deal from reading non-traditional students’ papers, as they offer a perspective unique to their extensive life experiences. However, Moore also mentions how “everybody can have the same problems with writing,” and that his tutoring style and approaches are “pretty consistent regardless.” By treating all clients with this equality of respect, Caldwell creates a positive environment where both consultant and client can learn from each other. Their center has to address a very different demographic than Appalachian’s, with many students struggling with their own identities as well as their writing. We as consultants can learn from their center’s commitment to familiarity with clients and personal tutoring style in order to better help and understand students of diverse backgrounds.

    The constructive learning environment that Caldwell manages to achieve is attributed in great part to the diligence of their “willing” and “trained staff.” In order to become a tutor at Caldwell’s Writing Center, a consultant needs to have passed the first year writing course at Caldwell Community College, English 111 (Benton). Prospective consultants submit an application with a writing sample and two staff references (Benton). Students are often referred to the writing center as a possible consultant by an English teacher on campus or else are students who have formerly utilized the Writing Center and exhibited a desire to work there (Benton). Caldwell does not have any shortage of people applying to be consultants and has not had to advertise for open positions in many years (Freeman). Once a new consultant is hired, they begin their job training. Newly hired consultants will meet with Freeman, who will show them the basic workings of the Center, and with Benton, who will teach them the philosophy of the Writing Center and the basics of tutoring. The new consultant will then shadow an experienced tutor for their first week to learn how a typical session goes (Benton). When they begin to tutor on their own, one of the Center’s staff members will sit in on the sessions until the consultant feels comfortable and confident enough to handle the session on their own. Because of their collaborative focus and environment, consultants are encouraged to ask questions and receive advice from others as often as possible, thus deepening their knowledge and understanding and helping them to become the best that they can be. This sharing of information relates to Murphy’s discussion of socially constructed knowledge in The Writing Center and Social Constructivist Theory. Additionally, the Center’s emphasis on collaboration borrows from Andrea Lunsford’s article Collaboration, Control, and The Idea of a Writing Center. Caldwell achieves success through collaboration with teachers, students, and each other as a tutoring staff to keep students on a path of improvement. By consistently acknowledging improvements and successes in writers, they are able to boost their confidence and help writers see that their time in the center is useful as a collaborative learning experience.

    Consultants exemplify their willingness to assist by offering up free tutoring sessions to all students and faculty of Caldwell Community College. This center offers face-to-face sessions, asynchronous email submissions, and phone calls for quick questions (“The Writing Center”). Face-to-face sessions usually last anywhere from 20-40 minutes (Freeman). The consultants that students meet with are not major-specific tutors, much in the same way that our Writing Center works where “everyone helps with everything” (Freeman). Tutors are trained to be effective with helping in all areas of writing. If a consultant is not familiar with a certain type of writing or assignment, he or she knows where to find assistance either via handouts or online resources. By modeling how to access various resources, the consultant gives the client tools for later writing help. If a resource cannot be found within the center or online, the tutor will help the client to find out what questions they need to ask his or her instructor for clarification.

    All online sessions are handled by permanent part-time employee, Holly Freeman, within a 48-hour response period. In order to schedule an online session, a student must fill out and email a submission form that contains many of the questions that consultants would ask if a client were to come into the center for a session (Freeman). These include the assignment details, concerns about the assignment, etc. Freeman will then read both the submission form and the assignment and then respond asynchronously. Much in the same way that Appalachian operates, Caldwell adopts Stephen North’s philosophy in The Idea of a Writing Center by focusing on improving the writer rather than the paper. For this reason, Freeman prefers the email response method over the review tool in Microsoft Word so that it does not seem like she is critiquing the paper line by line (Freeman). In her email responses, she tries to address higher order concerns before lower order ones, always encouraging students to resubmit the paper after improvements have been made (Freeman). As with any method, there are disadvantages to having an online session: the consultant cannot see facial expressions or body language to see how their criticism is being responded to or if they are being properly understood. Asynchronous online sessions are also time consuming, as students may not receive the feedback in time to make the changes that are needed. Despite this, online sessions have definite advantages: they allow Freeman to provide the student with a “written plan of action” that is easy to keep up with, and they give a certain level of anonymity to the student (Freeman). In addition, they allow students to seek writing help even if their schedules do not allow for them to physically come into the center.

    By working with writers no matter the assignment or client, Caldwell’s Writing Center, “helps clients become better writers, and are able to boost student confidence and promote success in all areas of writing.” The Writing Center is a safe haven for students throughout their time at Caldwell. The comfortable, welcoming environment gives students peace and confidence as they work to improve themselves and their academic work. As Holly Freeman states, “everything that we do revolves around making students have the best college experience possible (Freeman).” Sometimes, students will come to work on various types of school work, writing or otherwise, in the Writing Center because they can trust that they will receive the quality help that they need. Writing Center staff have even noticed that, “many times, even semesters after they have graduated, they [students] will pop back in to visit or to bring a resume for a job they are applying for (Freeman).” Through their efforts, the Writing Center has become an effective and useful resource for the students and faculty of Caldwell Community College where students feel safe and supported to learn and improve.

    Overall, Caldwell Community College has a very successful writing center. The family atmosphere that they have created is a large part of their success. The Writing Center at Appalachian and the Writing Center at Caldwell have many similarities in the way that they operate, the tutors that they employ, and their overall mission and philosophy. However, Caldwell proves itself to be extremely effective in handling the inherent differences of being a part of a community college. Caldwell truly gets to know their students, in large part through the introductory stage of sessions as emphasized in Newkirk’s article The First Five Minutes. By taking the time to truly understand and sympathize with their students, the Writing Center encourages students to keep returning and to continue to build on their skills as writers.